User blogs

The Quantum Tree is a port of the first ever video game for quantum computers. Of course, the quantum calculations are simulated in this app. Players embark on a thrilling science fiction adventure across space and time as this game unites the majesty of the quantum universe with the macroscopic reality of the classical world.

At each decision point of the game the player may choose one of two options, or both - mimicking the concept of superposition which underlies the power of quantum computing. When this option is selected, two parallel realities are spawned. Players can switch between different realities at any time to discover how each choice develops.

A third-person platform jumping game in virtual reality? A fresh arrival on the App Store proves it’s a hit!

In today era of virtual reality’s rebirth everyone is wondering: what kind of experiences are most suitable for a comfortable VR experience? While seemingly most fitting first-person-perspective shooters turned out to be a number one headache activators, the Polish developer Tom Graczyk proposes a third-person-perspective position in his freshly released title Space Box: The Journey out of the Box. Originally developed for a “normal mode” this 3D puzzle platformer turns out it was meant to be a VR game. When placing an iPhone into any VR googles all Space Box’s platforms’ positions seem a lot clearer with a stereoscopic view and ability to look around makes puzzles more pleasurable. Guiding the main character without any hands controller, but only by the head movement provides a vivid platform-style action right before your eyes – not in your brain causing unpleasant nausea. The amount of interface boiled down to a minimum also adds to a pleasant virtual reality experience.

Looks like “thinking outside the box” in terms of a VR experience has given a new meaning to the message of Space Box. You can a look at the game in action here: https://youtu.be/iZiFf53f-W4

Tom Graczyk is an indie games developer and a retro games fan since the 8-bit games era. Made his first games on ZX Spectrum. Every title is made by himself – whether it's about coding, graphics or composing music.

A 3D puzzle platformer for iPhone and iPad that challenges your 3D orientation skills like nothing before, uniquely mixing Fez’s world twisting with Angry Birds’ jumping physics. Probably the first VR platformer for iPhone. Asking one of the most important questions in everybody’s life: “Can you cross your limits?”

"Hello Naked Gameplay readers, please check out our indie project Exo Exit which is going to hit Kickstarter in March. This game is going to be awesome considering the fact we have no funding and are such a small team. Please come and show some support, feedback is very welcome. It's going to be for PC and Mac, possibly VR too. There will be a full soundtrack for fans and a companion novel too. More to come, watch this space! Thanks from me, Stu the Creative Director."

Mars -­ a home to mankind in the distant past -­ is overrun with hostile alien species. But given the options in a world ravaged by catastrophic attacks, it seems man’s only hope of reclaiming a planetary home and saving its kind. Recolonising the shattered planet’s surface -­ whilst defending yourself against hostile alien species, and with only a simple comms system back to Exo Exit ship’s command? Your chances seem slim to none. One thing’s for sure: with the authorities’ dim views on your human rights, you’ve got nothing to lose.

KEY FEATURES

Explore the ruins of a lost civilisation as you journey across an expansive landscape.

Defend against hostile alien species attacks in surface clashes.

Survive within an inhospitable environment using what’s left from man’s previous red planet habitation to fight hunger, thirst and radiation.

Sebastian Frank: The Beer Hall Putsch is a very entertaining and exhilarating story which comes to life in a thrilling point-and-click adventure game.

The story is set in Germany, in the aftermath of WWI. Put yourself in the shoes of Sebastian Frank and use your ingenuity to solve puzzles, fulfilling the protagonist's quest of stopping Hitler from seizing power.

We are a small indie group and we would love to able able to produce this point-and-click adventure game. For now we have a demo that you can download the demo at our website:http://sebastianfrankgames.com/games

The Kickstarter andSteam Greenlight launches that I've planned for months for my adventure game Demetrios, will finally happen in a few days!
Both pages will be online simultaneously onOctober 6th. (next tuesday!)

For that occasion, I've been preparing an updated demo of the game (v1.3). This takes account of all the feedback I've had so far!

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CHANGES SINCE 1.2 :
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- HTML5 version of the demo available!

Despite my game being a Point & Click, the Ace Attorney series had quite a big influence on it!
And this is why pretty much every character in the game will have several animated expressions!

For example, here are the current Bjorn expressions :

-Cookies are bigger and easier to find!

Most people found that cookies were a very interesting concept. They're hidden on screens and you need to find them to get in-game hints. So it's kinda like an optional game in the game!

However, they were a bit TOO well hidden. So I have resized each of them about 1.5 to 2 times.

Also, there's a new cookie counter, which gives you how many cookies are left to find in each room! This should make the search more attractive :)

- English and French texts have been proofread

English isn't my native language, and Draclvr from the GameBoomers forum has been kind enough to proofread the game text. There should be way less mistakes now :)

Another adventure game fan also did the French text proofreading - even though I'm French, I still make some spelling mistakes :p

- Corrected windows interfaces to make them prettier

Some of them had been very quickly done for the first prototype, and I never changed them. Now it looks better and more professional!

- Corrected fonts for french and spanish characters

Accented language-specific characters would not display. I had to modify the TTF font manually to make them appear!
Finding good-looking copyleft fonts is very difficult, and fonts with support for every language is next to impossible!
I didn't want to revert back to basic fonts like Arial or Verdana, so this was pretty much the only solution.

- Improved game performance

I've added a cache for dialogs and translations texts when changing room, so they're not loaded at every room switch. This makes for a much smoother experience! Now changing room is near-instant on modern computers!

- Improved hotspots view (prettier and texts don't overlap anymore) :

-Automatic framerate detection

The game will run at 60FPS or 30FPS according to your computer abilities! This is detected during the game startup.
Frameskip is managed manually in the game engine (all the variables related to speeds like timers are doubled at each step)

That way, people can try the game without having to download it! (which is tedious for many people who just won't bother)

With Game Maker Studio, it's supposed to be just choosing another export type, however it's not that simple!

- The game was way too slow (Full HD is too much for HTML5 to handle) => I had to reduce the resolution, and to get real gain, I had to actually reduce the size of the graphics used. So I made scripts to reduce the files, and many other changes (graphics were wrongly placed on screen)

- HTML5 file loads are asynchronous (unlike computer versions), so this required loading the graphics beforehand (otherwise they would not appear, or way too late) This meant adding some load screens between changing rooms. Also, the "image loaded" event caused many problems.

- I had to switch from 60FPS to 30FPS to make it playable on slower computers. Again, it's not as easy as changing one variable (but now, it is!) because I hadn't planned it and had to make a few fixes here and there to make it work.

NB : I'm not using any automatic frameskip function, because they wouldn't work with HTML5. Instead, I just double the speed of everything which has a speed in each step (example : typewriting is twice faster)

- I needed a custom startup screen (because there's quite a lot of big files to load), and Game Maker Studio doesn't provide one by default. You can have a picture (which won't appear...), OR a loading bar, but there's no easy way to make a picture WITH a loading bar?!

Some people talked about checking the demo, and I did, but it wasn't really self explanatory (no tutorial or anything, at least I couldn't find it) Also, I couldn't see the loading when starting the demo because it started immediately! However I figured it out, and I was finally able to add a picture WITH a loading bar. Phew! Thanks for making it easy...

- On Firefox, there's a bug with mouse clicks : if the frame takes too long to render, the mouse input will not register the "mouse button released" event. So even though I physically released the button, it still registers it as being pressed at every following step, UNTIL I click again!

So far it seems to be a Game Maker Studio bug : it only does that on Firefox, and only with the mouse : I've tested it on two computers. If I try with a keyboard button instead, it works perfectly. I think I'll report it - but i may not be easy to reproduce it in an example project. I haven't been able to find a workaround, so this means Firefox users will have to sometimes click several times to make it work.

- I also had a LOT of trouble (almost spent a day on this issue!) with the loading image event, only on Firefox. I submitted several images to load at the same time, and the result was... random. Most of the time it worked fine, but many times, it reported having load the same file several times, or report an incorrect file, or just forget to tell that it's loaded that file! Firefox went totally berserk.

The solution was... to load the files sequentially. And it works great. Sometimes it stills loads the files incorrectly, but I added a timeout and some checks to ensure it works and to try again in case a loading fails.

- Internet Explorer has many issues : the new audio engine doesn't work with it (found a workaround), and surfaces are totally glitchy. When creating a surface, it's actually rendered on screen immediately (and covering up the whole screen!) instead of hidden on every other environment. (still hasn't fixed that yet, it seems to be a bug with GMS again but I have to investigate)

However, it's working perfectly on Google Chrome, and even with the new Microsoft Edge browser (and it's actually the fastest one!!!) I've spent 3-4 days to make this HTML5 version work, it was tedious at times but now I've got some satisfying results. I just need to fix some of the IE issues, make a few improvements, and I'll add it to my site's demo page